Morgan's Corner: Stance against the 'establishment' looks like a stand for big business

View full sizeAP photoGov. Chris Christie speaks at the American Federation for Children's third annual National Policy Summit at the Westin in Jersey City, on Thursday, May 3, 2012. Christie renewed his call Thursday for lawmakers to pass school choice legislation this spring and heaped more criticism on those who oppose his efforts, at one juncture using civil rights-era imagery to emphasize his point.

Ironically, Chris Christie, whose known for striking a bellicose pose and throwing his considerable weight around actually called someone else a bully last week. The occasion was a forum hosted by the American Federation For Children at the Westin Hotel on Jersey City's waterfront.

Christie claimed he's standing up to the bully of the "entrenched educational establishment," referring to his ongoing battle with the state's teachers union.
Christie was at the conference to tout his administration's school voucher program that, if passed, would provide indirect public funding that in theory would cover some, if not all, the tuition for students in underperforming public schools to transfer to a private school.

Christie was a hit with the 150 delegates at the AFC's opening luncheon. He said everything they wanted to hear. He launched into his now familiar screed about the public school tenure system he claims makes it virtually impossible to fire bad teachers and he repeated his oft-heard declaration about getting them out of the classroom. To the extent the tail is wagging the dog, the governor is right in resisting pressure from that sector.

True, it's the job of labor unions to improve the working conditions of its membership, but often state and municipal governments, with elected officials courting votes, have made some bad tradeoffs with public money.

However I'm old enough to remember when, in order to make ends meet, my high school history teacher was also my milkman. The pitiful salaries teachers earned in the 1950s was the impetus for unionizing and we shouldn't forget that.

But Christie is allying himself with outfits like the American Federation For Children, founded by a cabal of right wing billionaires, who on occasion work in tandem with the American Legislative Exchange Council that gave us the Stand Your Ground laws as well as the new age Jim Crow voting law that have popped up in more than two dozen states. ALEC is another aggregation of right-wingers with lots of money who are willing to pay for the government they want.

Recently the Star-Ledger ran an expose detailing how a number of bills concerning education, promulgated and backed by the Christie administration, are virtual ringers of models created by ALEC.

For those who don't know, ALEC is a non-profit organization whose membership includes many of the country's largest and most powerful corporations, as well as state and federal legislators, who meet and draw up legislation that the elected members take back to their state legislature or to congress and attempt to pass into law.

One Christie sponsored bill, The Urban Hope Act -- that reads like a template supplied by ALEC -- allows non-profit companies to run public schools in distressed cities. Another bill, modeled on an ALEC proposal, would essentially turn over supervision and running of public schools to public colleges and universities, making them exempt from the authority of boards of education. It will exempt school officials and employees from all state laws, rules and regulations regarding education.

ALEC and the AFC converge in their determination to privatize public education. It's troubling to say the least to contemplate this nexus of big money, elected officials, and mammoth corporations colluding to create and pass laws.

This is principally a Republican thing; the onerous, new restrictions on voting, even registering to vote, were born in GOP-dominated states.

In Michigan the GOP governor has tossed democracy aside and appointed "town managers," in several municipalities which usurp the power of the citizens and their elected officials. Thus becoming the sole voice in deciding how things should be done and run, rendering all that Republican palaver about freedom as just empty rhetoric.